Welcome to the K7FED Cross Band Repeater System
IRLP Node 3319 and EchoLink Node 6778

Located in the S.E. corner of Henderson, NV near Greenway and US95.


The repeater system and EchoLink/IRLP node is open and free for use by any FCC licensed Amateur Radio Operator at any time. 
Please feel free to use the node. 
Guidelines for node operation and control codes are located at the bottom of this page.

Output Freq / Input Freq
 447.675MHz / 442.675MHz
145.420MHz / 144.820MHz

100hz CTCSS

 


Currently the node is a ground level station transmitting at 447.675 MHz with a -5Mhz offset and linked to 145.420MHz with a -600Khz offset. The 2m and 440 repeaters are linked full time. It is intended to improve coverage in the far SE corner of the Henderson / Eastern Las Vegas Metropolitan area. Eventually I will look to relocating the repeater to a location with better coverage. As of 5/19/2007 the node is now capable of both EchoLink and IRLP connections using the Echo-IRLP scripts.

To check the node connection status on the air just send " 00 " from your DTMF pad.

Real time repeater and link status monitoring can be found here.

The repeater is constructed with these toys:

The Control portion:

  1. AC transient suppression power strips.
  2. Sinclair RM201-108S1B RX multicoupler shelf acting as a VHF receive preamp inserting about 23dB of gain and additional bandpass filtering.
  3. CAT WX-200 to monitor NWS and local civil emergency authorities for EAS alerts and relay them to the repeater. During EAS events there is a voice announcement every 15 minutes stating the nature of the event in progress.
  4. HP Procurve 2524 LAN Switch. Ports managed into 2 VLANs for LAN and WAN distribution with a 1000BT  FDx Trunk to another switch for my network.
  5. Equinox ESP-2MI is a serial over Ethernet device that allows me to remotely manage serial devices over the network.
  6. LinkComm RLC-DSP404 Repeater Controller. Network connected allowing me full remote control and VOIP linking over the internet.
  7. SpectraCom 8183 NetClock/GPS providing 10MHz reference to the VHF Quantar and a Stratum1 NTP time synchronization to my internal computer network.

The Radios and EchoIRLP computer:

  1. Belkin 1500KVA  UPS. Provides some backup power to the rack and transient suppression.
  2. Homebrewed P4 1Ghz Computer with 512mb RAM and 40gb hard disk running Fedora Linux core and EchoIRLP software connected full time to the internet via 20mb/5mb pipe.
  3. BlackBox ServView II Ultra 1RU  keyboard/mouse/color LCD display unit for the EchoIRLP computer.
  4. Kenwood TKR850 repeater @ 40 watts into a 6 cavity compact duplexer off of the picture. TX447.675MHz / RX442.675MHz PL100Hz.
  5. Motorola Quantar (VHF Range1, 125 watt, P25 digital capable) running in wideband analog only mode(+/-5KHz / 25Khz Channel Spacing) @ 50 watts output to the TelWave TPRD-1556 6 cavity BpBr duplexer off of the picture. I may add mixed digital/analog operation on the VHF side. TX 145.420MHz / RX 144.820MHz. PL 100.0hz.

 

Off Picture components include:

What is this repeater trying to tell me? courtesy tones and such...

The controller is currently configured with 4 ports. The controller beeps the port number for the repeater ports.

The ports are:

  1. The VHF repeater receiver.
  2. The UHF Repeater
  3. The Echo-IRLP Node Computer.
  4. The EAS Weather receiver.
  5. A virtual port for use by a VOIP connection.

If you hear 1 beep it is the VHF repeater receiver on port one un-keying, 2 beeps is the UHF repeater un-keying.
High-Low beeps is the EchoIRLP Node un-keying. 

DTMF Control Codes and such...

There are a few public control codes for the system. Here is a list for your awareness:

IRLP Connections:

EchoLink Connections:

 

Basic operational guidelines for IRLP

COMMON MODES
There are two connection modes for an IRLP connection.  Direct one-to-one or, one-to-many via a Reflector.

Direct connect is just like it sounds where repeater (node) "A" connects direct with node "B".  With this type of link the two nodes are interconnected and no other IRLP connections are possible.  While repeaters "A" and "B" are connected, anyone attempting to connect with either node will be told by a  recording that - "The node you are calling is currently connected to callsign" however all local traffic on each repeater will be heard on the other repeater as well.

While Direct Connect is preferred for a city to city chat, another type of  connection in use today is via the Western Reflector ( Ref 9250 ).  A reflector is a computer that is not connected to any radio but rather sits on lots of internet bandwidth capable of allowing many repeaters to be inter-connected together by streaming the received audio back to all other connected stations.  At any given time there are usually 10 to 20 repeaters around the world interconnected via this Reflector.   You can always check which stations are connected to the reflector by visiting http://status.irlp.net and looking for nodes connected to individual nodes or reflectors.

REFLECTOR USE
With reflector use the first thing we must all remember is to leave a gap between transmissions.  Having said that this is a good time to list the three main rules when connected to a reflector:

    Pause

    Pause

    Pause

Due to the slight increase in delays created by multiple Tone Squelch radios in the links between the repeater and IRLP link radio, a slight change in our normal operating procedures is required with IRLP. 

By leaving a pause between transmissions it ..... 

The most important guideline to remember is leaving a pause after pressing the PTT button as well as between transmissions

Please visit my affiliate group and the proud owners/operators of the western reflector 9250, 

NEVADA AMATEUR RADIO REPEATERS, INC.

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Email me at andy@technerd.net

This page last updated Thursday, July 30, 2009 07:25 PM